Celebrating Charles Harrison: Innovator and Designer

Celebrating Charles Harrison: Innovator and Designer

Sawyer Model of the View-Master. Courtesy of "Hyperallergic."

Credited with the revamping of the iconic View-Master, Charles Harrison (BFA 1954) was a celebrated designer and the first Black executive hired to work for Sears, Roebuck and Company. "As a designer and, ultimately, the head of Sears's design lab, Harrison was a shaper of products," reports the Chicago Reader. Harrison passed away on November 29, 2018, and was credited with the improvement of more than 750 products for Sears alone including the cordless shaver, the riding lawn mower, and the first plastic garbage bin with wheels. In 2008 Harrison became the first African American to receive the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s Lifetime Achievement National Design Award. Between 2016 and 2017, New York City's Museum of Modern Art added Harrison’s 1959 View-Master to their collection. Although it’s not mentioned in mainstream texts and collections, Harrison’s design brought the product outside of its conventionally professional setting to become a pop culture object. He made it, “available in a range of colors and designs that revolutionized its market appeal, taking it from a niche instrument for specialists and enthusiasts to a design that was cheap, accessible, and used by adults and children alike,” reports Hyperallergic. According to The Independent Harrison said what ultimately motivated him to design so many things throughout his career was, “the challenge of improving something, and making people smile” and “making life better for people—for humanity." Harrison’s design work is currently on display as part of African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race at the Chicago Cultural Center through March 3, 2019.

The Chicago Tribune announced that renowned Chicago architect and SAIC honorary degree recipient Jeanne Gang (HON 2013) will lead Studio ORD, a team of architects who will design the massive O’Hare International Airport expansion.

For more than 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers​, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries​, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate​, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman.